I don't think it worths it. It'll introduce extra complexity and edge cases. For example, somebody could replace nltk.data.path variable with a new list, and we'll be still using old list via _paths reference. 

That said, if you think 'paths' argument is better for 'find' function then go for it. 

Btw, I think it 'paths' argument should be None by default, not 'path', because of the same reason (we'd better resolve this variable at run time, not at import time).